Sports fans ensnared in Fox, Cablevision rate duel

FILE - Cablevision Headquarters in Bethpage, N.Y.,is seen in a file photo from Aug. 8, 2005. Three Fox channels have gone dark for some 3 million Cablevision subscribers Saturday morning Oct. 16, 2010 after talks broke down amid a programming dispute. The blackout affects Fox 5 and My9 in New York and Fox29 in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Ed Betz, File)
— AP

FILE - Cablevision Headquarters in Bethpage, N.Y.,is seen in a file photo from Aug. 8, 2005. Three Fox channels have gone dark for some 3 million Cablevision subscribers Saturday morning Oct. 16, 2010 after talks broke down amid a programming dispute. The blackout affects Fox 5 and My9 in New York and Fox29 in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Ed Betz, File)
/ AP

NEW YORK 
For the third time this year, Cablevision's 3 million subscribers in New York and Philadelphia are at the mercy of one of its disputes with networks, and caught in the middle are sports fans who missed playoff baseball and Sunday's New York Giants game.

Negotiators for Cablevision and Fox parent News Corp. failed to reach an agreement over rates Sunday, more than a day after their deal expired amid negotiations for a new one. Fox pulled its channels and programming while the two sides discuss how much Cablevision will pay to carry them.

Cablevision spokesman Charles Schueler reiterated that arbitration would be "the fastest and fairest way to return Fox programming to Cablevision customers."

Fox 5 and My9 in New York and Fox29 in Philadelphia were dark, as well as cable channels Fox Business Network, NatGeo Wild and Fox Deportes.

"This is ridiculous!" said Kevin Ryan, owner of Denny's Bar, a family business in Brooklyn's Kensington neighborhood. "I'm relying on people to come in who are Giants fans - and they're walking out, even though I pay for the football package."

He blames his debacle on "typical billionaire behavior, against the small businessman like me; and regular, everyday people get caught in the middle."

Ryan said he expected to lose "a good amount of money over three big events": the Giants' 28-20 win over Detroit and the first two games of baseball's National League Championship Series between San Francisco and Philadelphia.

Cablevision subscribers have been victims of multiple blackouts this year. In March, customers lost their ABC station in New York in the hours leading up to the Oscars. Viewers missed the first 15 minutes of the awards show before Cablevision and Walt Disney Co. reached a tentative deal.

Scripps Networks Interactive Inc.'s Food Network and HGTV also went dark for three weeks in a similar dispute. Separately, Cablevision's Rainbow Media unit played hardball this summer with AT&T Inc. in fee negotiations over three channels: AMC, IFC and WE tv. That threatened AT&T's U-verse television customers' ability to watch the season premiere of AMC's "Mad Men."

Other industry standoffs this year have pitted Time Warner Cable Inc. against News Corp.'s Fox channels, which threatened the college bowl season and new episodes of "The Simpsons," and Mediacom Communications Corp. against Sinclair Broadcasting Group.

The latest dispute is another example of how networks are struggling to find profits as advertising revenue dwindles and programming costs grow. Networks are transmitted freely over the airwaves, but expensive event programming has increasingly led the companies behind them to demand fees from cable TV and satellite operators for retransmitting those signals.

Networks claim that cable companies charge customers hefty sums each month - about $18 - for basic broadcast signals but don't pass on enough payment to networks. Most broadcasters get a fee - say, $1 per cable subscriber - for allowing pay-TV providers to carry the channels on their lineups.